Seems like:
- history did not, in fact, end
- geography still matters
- military preparedness still matters
I've had several epiphanies in recent years. The most salient is that many of the -isms that capture the imagination from time to time are fantasies precisely because they require total buy-in from everyone, to a man, in order to have any hope of succeeding by their own metrics.
Socialism, communism, internationalism, libertarianism...all these things have obvious exploitable weaknesses that only a sufficiently educated and credentialled person could possibly overlook.
Just as one layabout brings down the whole edifice of marxism, one militaristic state brings down the whole edifice of global interconnectedness.
Time was we all in the west understood this differently than we do now. The answer back them was mercantism, imperialism, colonialism. That obviously had its downsides, but it was structured around the precept that first the oil, or the rubber, or sugarcane, must flow. And all the other niceties can come after.
The Chinese are doing a version of this now, with a little less moral windowdressing perhaps, but also less force projection too. Time will tell if they've landed on the correct answer. I suspect the fact that they're hurting for petrochemicals too now indicates that they have not discovered the trick either.
So what? Cross your arms and blink your eyes and magically the Iranians aren't lobbing missiles everywhich way, aren't chanting death to america, and are so spectacularly unremarkable that no one cares if they have a nuclear program or not? Peace and fucking brotherhood for all?
Wouldn't that be nice. But that's one of those isms that exists to trap unwary minds, isn't it?
I regrettably conclude that irl, the only plausible choices are to either roll over and play dead or to bash their heads real good now so that their grandkids will have migrains. And meanwhile the petrochemicals will flow and the bodycount can stay low for a generation or two. One hopes.
